Thoughts on Bluegrass in Baltimore: The Hard Drivin' Sound and its Legacy

A few years back I was asked by Live For Live Music to provide some thoughts on my inspiration for my book, Bluegrass in Baltimore: The Hard Drivin' Sound & Its Legacy.  Below is an excerpt from that piece, you can view the full article here.

“There was Nashville and then there was Baltimore,” explained bluegrass legend Del McCoury, “and Baltimore was really the hot town for bluegrass music back in the ‘50s and ‘60s.”  I was interviewing Del in January 2011 about his upcoming album with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Legacies, for an article that I was writing for Honest Tune Magazine. During our conversation, he became sidetracked and began to talk in length about his formative years as a musician playing in the rough and tumble bar scene in Baltimore in the 1950s and 60s.  As a Baltimore resident I was vaguely aware of the scene that had first flourished in the city as migrants from the Appalachian region moved north looking for work and had always been fascinated by this often overlooked musical scene that proved to be highly influential over the years. The story of this Baltimore scene was one that I felt needed to be told.

The influence of this hard drivin’ scene, while a dominate force in the Mid-Atlantic region and especially on the burgeoning Washington D.C. scene, was also far-reaching and extended well beyond simple bluegrass boundaries.  Everyone from Jorma Kaukonen (Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna), Chris Hillman(The Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers), Pete Wernick (Hot Rize), Vince Herman (Leftover Salmon), Trey Anastasio (Phish), David Grisman, and countless others have spoken of the influence of Baltimore and the musicians the city helped produce. Sam Bush would sing about one the Baltimore scene’s most revered figures, banjo-picker Walt Hensley, on his 2006 album, Laps in Seven. The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia, a long-time fan of Hensley and many of the other bands that emerged from Baltimore, would regularly include songs from those bands in his acoustic and bluegrass sets.